WordPress.com Creator Raises $29.5M — Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic and creator of open-source blogging system WordPress, stopped by my apartment earlier this week. Matt, who is one of my closest friends, brought his Texan sense of humor and all-around good cheer …

Act Two — You've probably seen the news on GigaOM, Automattic has raised a new “series B” round of funding. We're entering what I consider Act II of the Automattic story. I'll talk about where we're going, but first some history. — In 2005 Automattic was small.

Times Company in Group Investing in Blog Publisher — Automattic, the commercial arm of the popular WordPress publishing platform for blogs, has received $29.5 million in financing from four companies, including a small portion from The New York Times Company.

Apple Q1: The iPod Has Left The Building (AAPL) — We'll let SAI's Henry Blodget explain the pros and cons of paying attention to quarterly numbers, guidance, and whisper numbers tomorrow. And we're not going to try to analyze why AAPL is plummeting in after-hours trading.

iPhone and iPod touch nab SNES emulation — You've waited, you've watched, and now your wildest dreams are about to come true. That's right, someone has coded a native SNES emulator for the iPhone / iPod touch. Right now, the project is still in the beta / testing phase …

Create Your Own Reddit — Reddit has announced a brand new feature that they are currently testing out in closed beta - the ability for users to make their own Reddits. Reddit has long had the “other reddits” featuring ones specializing in programming, science, politics, etc …

GOOGLE DROPS MORE THAN 160 POINTS — That's not something we're used to hearing, but since its peak back in the Fall at nearly 750, Google has dropped to 584 currently, a 166 point drop (it's dropped more in after hours, all the way down to 568). It's on a steep decline in the past few days …

Real-Estate Search Engine Roost Launches With Full MLS Listings — Just when you thought the real-estate bubble had burst and the economy was going to hell, here comes another real-estate search engine. Today we see the launch of Roost, a real-estate site inspired by the lean look and feel of travel search engine Kayak.

iPod Recycling Speaker by Bird-Electron — This product from from Bird-Electron is the “one and only Recycling Speaker for iPod". The dimension is exactly the same as the plastic package for iPod Nano (1st & 2nd Gen.) and iPod Shuffle (2nd & 3rd Gen.). — It doesn't require …

HP's desktop with solid-state drive packs 16GB — If consumers and businesses are going to be convinced to switch to solid-state drives over hard disks, it's going to take something more compelling than 16GB. — On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard will introduce a new version of its Compaq DC7800 series desktop PC.